5 Answers
5

Officially

Motivation

What motivates you in your community work. And "I want to become MVP" is not going to impress anyone ;-)

Objectives (for next year)

What are your plans for community work next year. Regardless of MVP status.

Online Activities (this year)

A list of everything you've done, that we can track online. Open Source contributions, blogs, tweets, whatever it may be.

Offline Activities (this year)

And a list of what you've been up to, that isn't easily tracked online. User Group presentations, other offline activities.

And a few notes and considerations

The work you do in everyday life, working for your boss/employer - none of that needs to be part of your application. You don't get MVP for doing your job. It's fine you did a client workshop on SXA because a client asked for one; it's also fine that you built and delivered an Experience Awards winning site for another client. It's just not related to MVP status :-)

And scrambling onto every social media channel mid October when MVP season starts (but nothing going on for the entire year before October)... Good start - keep it up for the next round of nominations ;-)

Something else to add here is that it will depend on the type of MVP you are going for:

Technology MVP

All of the above. Doesn't matter how long you have been working with Sitecore or what your skill level is, a Technology MVP is all about contributing to the community.

Digital Strategist MVP

Again this is about contributions, but sometimes with a strategy role, the work you do cannot be shared with the community due to NDA with clients etc... So with this type of MVP, you can detail in the nomination what you have done to help clients realize their digital strategy using Sitecore - but community involvement is still important if you can

Commerce MVP

Similar to Technology MVP but with a slant toward Commerce and also those that are using Sitecore Experience Commerce to deliver client solutions. Although, I would guess that those 2 things go together anyway :)

Ambassador MVP

This is less about community contributions and more about people who help provide Sitecore with feedback on the product and participate in panels setup by Sitecore for this purpose. They should still participate in community events, but will probably be doing more behind the scenes work to help Sitecore than other MVP types.

tl/dr;

Community, Community, Community - and the important thing to note here is that it is contributing to the community, not just watching community. Being on Slack or SSE isn't a contribution - actively participating, answering/asking questions, presenting, writing your own blog posts - that is the key and what should go on the form. Adding that you watched a video on Sitecore on YouTube! probably not!

Aside from what was already answered by Mark and Tamás, I see a lot of confusion in people thinking MVP status is about being experienced with Sitecore like "Developer A has been working with Sitecore for 8 years so he deserves an MVP status because he is a great developer and does great work". Again if Developer A is not active in community, social channels, slack, community forums, essentially does not contribute to the community in any way they are not eligible.

Remember it's related to how much the community benefit from what you have been doing(not your clients or company).

Bingo. If you write the sweetest Sitecore code has no affect on your MVP nomination, if you are help the community move forward and grow, that matters. A lower level dev who does a lot to help the community has a much better chance than the super dev who does nothing outside of work.
– Chris AuerDec 14 '18 at 13:10

If publish all your blog posts on your company website, do not expect that they will be highly rated because they look like something that you have done at work (NOTE: think about it especially when they do NOT bring any unique knowledge or they are just useless for a Community)

If you have NOT done too much this year, do NOT write that you will do more next year, it will NOT help you